MEXICO CITY – Army troops seized nearly $7.3 million during the search of a house in Ciudad Victoria, the capital of the northern state of Tamaulipas, the Defense Secretariat said.

Soldiers from the 8th Military Zone based in Ciudad Victoria received a tip from an anonymous caller last Friday that several armed people had been seen at a house.

A search of the house turned up 9.5 million pesos (about $705,000) and $6.57 million in cash, as well as four vehicles and four handguns.

The property was apparently a safe house belonging to the Cardenas Guillen crime family, better known as the Gulf drug cartel, the secretariat said.

The cartel, which is based in Tamaulipas, controls drug trafficking in most of Mexico’s Gulf region.

The cash was turned over to the SIEDO organized crime unit of the Attorney General’s Office in Mexico City, the Defense Secretariat said.

Mexico’s most powerful drug trafficking organizations, according to experts, are the Tijuana cartel, which is run by the Arellano Felix family, and the Gulf, Juarez and Sinaloa cartels.

Two other large drug trafficking organizations, the Colima and Milenio cartels, also operate in the country.

“Los Zetas,” a group of army special forces veterans and deserters who initially worked as hitmen for the Gulf organization, may now be operating as a cartel, some experts say.

La Familia Michoacana, which operates in the western state of Michoacan, the southern state of Guerrero and the central state of Mexico, which surrounds the Federal District and forms part of the Mexico City metropolitan area, is considered the largest trafficker of synthetic drugs in Mexico.

Since taking office in December 2006, President Felipe Calderon has deployed more than 45,000 soldiers and 20,000 federal police officers across Mexico in a bid to stem the wave of violence unleashed by drug traffickers. EFE